Buy A Journal For Your Character #WRITELIKECRAZY

The slender moleskine journals come in two-packs. Last time I bought one, I decided to use one for my musings, and on a whim, I decided to give the other one to my new character, Bessie. I don’t want to give too much away because a new book is like a new romance. You start telling everyone about it and then you ruin it. What I can say is her name is Bessie she 21 and she lives in Chicago in 1930. (And fear not ATLiens… she is born and raised in Atlanta, but she moved to Chicago a couple years ago.)

So, the light blue journal is for me, and the deep blue one is for Bessie.

I really love this exercise. I write the journal by hand– like a real journal. In doing it this way I get the benefit of handwriting. (You don’t get frustrated and delete a days work.) And also, I am getting to know Bessie without the pressure of developing plot or knowing the themes of the work. With the journaling format, I can just wander and let her free-associate the way I do in my real journal.

I have tried this before, but this is the first time that I actually bought a notebook for the character to have all to herself. When I have attempted this in the past, I did it on the computer. I think that I had been thinking of it as “just” an exercise. If you have ever been in my class will know that for me “just” is a dirty word. If you do it as “just” anything, you will not do it right.

This time, I took it seriously and the results have been wonderful. I think about Bessie all the time. At the risk of sounding too crazy or woo-woo, my handwriting is even a little different when I write for her. The penmanship is more formal. She has more pride in her journal than I have in mine. I just scribble and scrawl, but Bessie is the first person in her family to finish ninth grade, so she is very pleased to be telling her story. She is also very aware that this story is being written. She says things like “Talking about something and writing it down is two different things. Pen and paper is forever.”

At the same time, I am not completely possessed by the character. The author-me, the one who is obsessed with Toni Morrison in general and Beloved, specifically has a hand in the project. When remembering her mother’s funeral, Bessie lets us know that she had money enough to get her mother’s full name– first, middle, maiden, and married name engraved on the tombstone. “And I didn’t have to pay with nothing but cash money.”